Obviously I think the Church would bulldoze temples before it got this bad, but still, an interesting thought experiment.
Over the next century or so we are going to potentially see a bizarre phenomenon with Church growth. In some countries churches will shutter en masse with wards and stakes being merged many times over–all while membership could be increasing or even exploding in terms of percent population.
How can this happen? In many countries the background population will be cratering. Throughout the history of Church growth we have largely taken the growth or stasis of the denominator of background population more or less for granted. While Church growth ebbs and flows depending on historical contingency, the populations the Church has been ensconced in have been either growing, or in a few cases, in a state of stasis such as modern day Western Europe. This is about to change.
The implosion of fertility rates has not received nearly the attention it merits. We’re talking zombie apocalypse here, with overgrown, abandoned towns and villages and a permanent state of economic recession from the aging population (and that’s in the developed world, in developing countries with low fertility without government resources to care for their aged old people without living children to care for them will literally be dying in the streets).
When I was going to graduate school the five-alarm fire, “lowest low” fertility was around 1.3 children per woman. For a while we thought we had seen the worst of it when some of that fertility decline was shown to be the result of “tempo effects,” or women bearing children later, but then the world said “hold my beer,” and fertility rates took a nose dive, with no signs of letting up.
South Korea is now .78. I’ve seen back-of-the-envelope calculations that suggest that this means that in 100 years South Korea will have 5% of the population it currently has. For me to do an accurate population projection for South Korea I would need to age bracket-mortality rates and fertility rates and more time than I have to take into account the effect of the current population pyramid (“population momentum”), but that 5% figure seems reasonable on the face of it. For example, if replacement is 2.1, then with a TFR of .78 every generation is 37% of the previous one. If you take the mean length of a generation of 25 years, then a simple Excel calculation will show that out of 1000 South Koreans in one generation, three generations later there will be only 51 left in the final cohort, adding 25 years to help flush out the previous generations in the population pyramid puts the 5% figure in the right ballpark.
(UN projections are often not helpful because they often include these weird assumptions built into the model that fertility will naturally increase closer to replacement because—magic).
To put that into Church context, let’s say, for the sake of a thought experiment, the Church declines at the same rate as society writ large in South Korea. Right now in South Korea there are 60 wards, that means in 100 years there will only be 3 in the whole country. If the Church shrinks slower than this through a combination of proselytizing and members having more children (fun fact, a member of South Korea’s Supreme Court is a Latter-day Saint who has four children) then it will be in the interesting situation of decreasing numerically while actually expanding in influence.
I picked South Korea because it’s one of the worst cases, but a lot of countries are headed that way, so some version of this will play out throughout the world since lower fertility is not just limited to East Asia and Europe anymore (e.g. Thailand’s is 1.3). While some may complain that 100 years is an awful long time to be extrapolating, the fact is that more than marginal increases in TFR for developed countries is virtually unheard of, so until the Amish take over there’s very little theoretical reason to see massive inertia of population decline somehow getting turned around even in 100 years. “As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream,” as to reverse the population crash through government sponsored paid leave (not that I’m against government sponsored paid leave, every little bit helps).
Sometimes people think immigration can solve this problem. It can help, but it’s not nearly enough. To get political for a moment, when you run the numbers on how many young people are needed to plug the gap in our caving-in population pyramids, it would require importing young migrants on numbers far beyond Democrats’ wildest dreams, plus the source countries for young workers (with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa) will also be drying up, so even if we were to somehow get around the political barriers to mass migration on a scale rarely ever seen in history that would be a temporary solution anyway. Indeed, it looks like after we work through the population momentum of previous years’ higher births, populations will be declining everywhere and with it, potentially, the Church, which could still paradoxically be “growing.”
The assumption that the Church will decline at the same rate as the rest of society is fair. But there’s also the possibility that while the Church will decline (by which I mean, the fertility rate among Church members, leading to fewer total members over those generations), it probably starts as a higher point than the rest of society and may decline at a lower rate (because…Church leaders will encourage reproduction). So while Church membership may decline there’s a chance that it may become a larger proportion of people in those societies? Not saying that should be the goal, but…
I know this is sort of tangential, but I would think the church is aware of these demographic projections and I am so baffled by all the temple announcements, do you have an explanation? It seems like President Nelson foresees growth, not decline.
(with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa)
And the last shall be first. Seriously.
Yes, I’ve seen a lot of these projections, and I saw an interview with one demographer who argued, similar to you I think, that it could lead to the West getting relatively MORE religious (percentage wise) since religious people often have higher fertility rates.
I wonder about all the temple’s too E. I think we’re headed very soon to the church struggling to staff some of the temples and I think that will become an increasing problem.
“When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.” –title and chorus of the third track of the Police’s third album
Staffing the temples is not an issue. When President Hinckley in ’97 described the pattern of lots of small temples all over the place he said, “They would be presided over, wherever possible, by local men called as temple presidents, just as stake presidents are called. They would have an indefinite period of appointment. They would live in the area, in their own homes. One counselor would serve as temple recorder, the other as temple engineer. All ordinance workers would be local people who would serve in other capacities in their wards and stakes. [ . . . ] These structures would be open according to need, maybe only one or two days a week—that would be left to the judgment of the temple president.”
Right, in the area I live, I’m hearing concerns about having enough temple workers and I’ve heard that about some other temples as well.
In the area I live, a dozen miles northwest of the Washington DC temple, members of my ward who wanted to be temple workers after the re-dedication were turned down because the temple does not need as many temple workers for its pared down district and reduced operating schedule.
Yes, circumstances vary. I didn’t say this was the case EVERYWHERE. Only in some places. But I do think struggling to staff temples will be an increasing issue as the demographic trends that Stephen C. describes play out.
I suspect temple staffing won’t be an issue, because staffing needs can be adjusted to the number of visitors, which likely run in parallel. So you reduce the number of days the temple is open, or the number of sessions per day. I don’t know what that means for one of the older, larger temples, but it’s a pretty straightforward process for the more recent, smaller temples. Even if there’s only one session per week (there’s actually a lot more), I’m glad that session is only 2.5 hours away rather than 4 hours.
Stephen C. says that immigration can’t fix this, but it seems like immigration would certainly help mitigate the problem. It seems to me that countries would be better off investing in immigration now, rather than preventing it at all costs.
More temples in more places (and sometimes more temples in the same places) will make temple attendance (as both patrons and workers) more convenient for some, but will decrease the demand on any one temple. In 1990 there were 40 stakes per temple. Today there are 18 stakes per temple. And if we magically completed every temple that has been announced, that would drop to 10 stakes per temple.
I expect that temples will continually adjust their operating hours. Just now I was checking out some of the temples across the US where I have lived over the years. One small temple is open for only a single endowment session on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with fuller schedules on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Another large temple isn’t open at all on Tuesdays and doesn’t have endowment sessions that start later than 2pm on most Saturdays. There’s really no way to know if this is primarily driven by the supply of workers or the demand from patrons.
In regards to temples, one response is that demographic gears grind slowly because we have to wait for the older generations to pass through the population pyramid and die off (a lesson democrats should take to heart every time they imply that white people not having babies=long-term democrat majority), even though the collapse will come hard when it eventually does. 100 years is a long time. Also, while I used South Korea as the worst case scenario, these effects will be more muted (but still big) in other countries. So the decline will happen inexorably, but slowly and gradually enough at first that it’s sort of a frog boiling water kind of thing before we’re gradually disabused of all the assumptions we’ve taken for granted such as constantly increasing economic demand.
It’s also worth noting that because of population momentum we will continue to grow in the US for a while even after we stop having enough babies to replace ourselves, but eventually we will have to pay the pied piper, and it will be hard to reverse when the actual numbers start coming down.
Several years ago I wrote about the Washington DC temple cutting back again on the number of endowment sessions, and Jonathan Stapley pointed out to me that after the Manti temple was dedicated in 1888, operations in the St. George temple were reduced from what they had been for many years.
In which decade will landlords in Provo start cutting prices on student apartments and cutting back on number of students per room?
SoCal where I live is kind of an interesting place in light of this discussion as membership is shrinking here due to the high cost of living (mainly, some other factors too). So I kind of wonder if what we’re seeing here is something of a precursor to the larger effects on church membership that Stephen C. predicts.
There’s been a fair amount of shrinking wards and stakes over the last few decades but the handbook has moved to making smaller and smaller wards okay. So our wards are getting kind of small (a challenge, I would say.)
So it was interesting when they announced another temple in our area not long ago that’s now well underway. We have other temples pretty close by, so building the Yorba Linda one confused me a bit. My memory is that the context for the President Hinkley quote about small temples that John quoted was the idea of putting them in out-of-the-way places so that members wouldn’t have to drive several hours. They could be open just a few days a week to meet the local members needs.
But Yorba Linda will only save people 20 or so minutes. The other temples are nearby. And our membership is shrinking.
And for me, this brings up the issue that Stephen C.’s picture suggests. The church sells off excess chapels when they are no longer needed (have sold a few in the Salt Lake area).
The church has never sold off a temple. What happens if/when needed temple days drop below once a week? What if some temples aren’t needed at all in 10 to 20 years?
I think that having more temples closer to where people live is going to make it easier for more people to be temple workers. It will open up staffing opportunities that previously were not feasible. We have a lot of older people in our area that would probably enjoy being temple workers but will not drive the 1hr 20min to the Seattle temple and definitely aren’t comfortable dealing with the freeway traffic that comes along with that drive.
As Stephen Fleming notes above, the small temples were announced by President Hinckley as being for remote places where there was no anticipation that the church would grow much. When Thomas Monson was president that started changing without any particular announcement why. New temples were being announced for cities a hundred miles from existing temples with plenty of spare capacity. Elder Gerrit Gong has spoken a couple times about more frequent temple service. Perhaps the temple ordinances will have a place in the future life of latter-day saints more like the Catholics’ mass.
Regarding demolishing unneeded temples, right now there are four temples in stages of demolition: Provo, Utah; Stockholm, Sweden; Kona, Hawaii; Anchorage, Alaska. Provo and Stockholm are gone and new temples will be built in their places. A new temple is under construction on the grounds of the Anchorage temple, and when the new one is complete, the old one will be demolished. Kona has been torn down to its framing. “Only a handful of structural posts will remain before the work of rebuilding commences.” These demolitions are all in the context of replacement with a new structure, but it gives a sense that they can be torn down when needed. It makes me wonder about the future of the LA temple, which I liked being near when I worked at UCLA.
Thanks for the context, John. Selling off a temple would be a bit of a different context as would needing to tear down a temple in order to sell the land. I’m guessing many members would find such an act painful, and our leaders in the future may be forced to choose between that act and choosing to let temples stand unused (or seldom used).
I tend to be suspicious of long-range population forecasts because past ones have been wildly inaccurate–I’m old enough to remember when overpopulation was going to destroy civilization. That’s no excuse for inaction though. Things could be better than Stephen’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest, or they could be worse.
But it doesn’t seem like anyone knows what to do about it. The proposals on the table in the US tend to be small potatoes compared to what Europe has tried without much success, though I agree that every little bit helps. (I once sat in on a seminar where American grad students were dumbfounded to learn most European counties have an explicit fertility policy, and European grad students were dumbfounded to learn the US does not.) If we could somehow get economic inequality in the US back to the levels of the 50s and 60s that would make it a lot easier for families to live on one income for a while, but I’m not holding my breath.
And a lot of it is cultural, not economic. Neo-Malthusian thinking still has a strong grip on the left, and many young couples think it is virtuous not to have children (another reason Democrats should not assume demographic change will hand them a long-term majority). It’s already a zombie idea that lives on despite all contrary evidence (like “tax cuts pay for themselves”) but hopefully it will fade once populations actually start to shrink.
Then there’s all the baggage from the long history of looking down on childrearing as “women’s work,” which made it low-status in sexist societies and something to escape from for many feminists. That needs to change too.
On temples: for me right now, going to the temple takes a day. Not the whole day, but close enough you can’t do much else. Also, you have to deal with rush hour big-city traffic, which intimidates some members of my stake. When one of the temples announced last Sunday is built, going to the temple will be a half-day for me, maybe less depending on where exactly it’s built. I am very much looking forward to it. I expect it to be a game-changer in terms of how many people in my stake can attend or serve as temple workers, and how often. Now consider the promises President Nelson has made about the effects of temple attendance (whether you believe them or not), and I don’t think the effort to build more temples is mysterious at all–though I’ll admit some of the Utah and southern California ones are non-obvious.
In a very real sense, though, all these new temples is leading to increased pressure on members for temple attendance. We see monthly Ward temple trips now happen twice per month, with exhortation to attend at additional times, individually. Portions of Stake Conference are dedicated to drumming up attendance, and local leadership pays much closer attention to when recommends expire – preemptively setting up renewal appointments. It’s not uncommon for the Celestial Room to be a place where you get seen and noticed, and Stake leadership is keen to acknowledge your presence. The assumption has been that “if you build it, they will come”, but really it’s “if you build it, then put the screws to the members, you might be able to keep it open for a few days each week.” Where we are, it’s common for temple workers to outnumber attendees in many sessions. There are surely instances where building an additional temple addresses overcrowding of existing temples. But that’s mostly not the case with the temples that are being announced. Addressing inconvenience and other attendance barriers is a worthy endeavor. But many of those temples will, within a few short years, see dwindling attendance. And that’s really the case without accounting for decreasing population and membership, which will exacerbate the problem. Personally, I’m just tired of being badgered to attend the temple more, and more, and more, …
Turtle, yes, my sense is the copious temple building is a product of the church having more money than it knows what to do with, combined with worries about flattening growth (I may have said that before). The leaders seem to feel that more temple attendance will just make things better all around.
But, yeah, my sense is that for many members, temple attendance can get to the point of diminishing spiritual return. My guess is there is a percentage of members who really feel spiritually fed by going to the temple a whole lot (twice a month) but my guess is such people are the minority (20%?)
I’m guessing most members would be good with attending the temple a few times a year. Such attendance rates could still be good spiritual nourishment for that portion of the membership. Having studied church history, my sense is that temple attendance in JS’s mind was meant to be a few times a year thing, not twice a month (long story).
So yeah, my guess is that though well intentioned, this big temple-attendance push isn’t going to have the effects the leaders are hoping for. Temple attendance is great, but I think we ought to think in some more balanced ways about our religious practice.
The Church isn’t and won’t likely be limited financially like many of the White Protestant sects are now. I think even the doubling of temples over the decade won’t lead to future decommissioning should growth really slow down. There are interesting outliers like the LA or DC temple. They are too big and on lots of land. DC is an Icon. LA is too big, better to make it smaller. LA seems like the only one that is a question of what should be done long term. Is LA iconic enough not to touch? The dorms at the LA complex aren’t needed now and the Chapel was built by members and both of those could be torn down and replaced by a nice smaller chapel. But do we need baseball fields there? And what to do to make the land useful to the LDS community.
FINALLY! A T&S POST ABOUT MY ONE-ISSUE VOTER HANGUP!
I don’t know if anybody here follows the Twitter account @MoreBirths but as a clearinghouse for information about the global fertility crisis, there’s nobody better. Here’s a Tweet (through a Twitter backdoor) with links to lengthy and detailed threads discussing the major factors driving low fertility worldwide, but particularly in industrial economies: https://nitter.poast.org/MoreBirths/status/1843860550020739320#m
To have solid fertility you need multiple of the following factors, though not necessarily all:
1. Pro-natal ethos (most commonly due to religion)
2. High marriage rates
3. Single family homes and lower density
4. Young adults getting out of the house promptly
5. Higher male earnings
6. An ethos of male participation in the household
7. Solid education for the young
8. Extended family support ethos
9. Intentionally relaxed parenting standards
10. Family-weighted work-life balance
11. Limitation of elective C-sections
As you can see, the Church does fairly well by this list, though we could be doing better. An unexamined contributor to the Church’s declining fertility rate is probably the Wasatch Front economic explosion, which increases density, ratchets up housing prices, “corporatizes” Utah culture, and has made Utah the most urban state in the nation in terms of population concentration.
It seems fairly clear at this point that sustainable birthrates are incompatible with heavily urbanized populations. Immigration doesn’t help with this as immigrants cluster in urban areas and the second-generation almost immediately assimilates to the urban anti-natal environment. Whatever society crawls out of our demographic wreckage will be a more rural and distributed one, and having a wider distribution of temples is great prep for that.
Hi Stephen C: Should we see this post as a continuation of what you wrote last month in “Is the Church Replacing Itself? Part II”? I understand you focused on the United States in the prior post, but I thought you more or less argued in that post that the number of children born to LDS families (average of 3) plus 2 or 3 converts coming into the church for every new member of record (see the church’s 2023 statistical report) led to the conclusion that “the fundamentals of Church growth are strong.”
Are you now suggesting that church membership will decline in absolute numbers but either maintain or increase as a proportion of the population? If so, are you offering a new interpretation or taking new evidence into account? For instance, are you warming up to demographic transition theory and finding it useful as a model for explaining demographic shifts taking place within the church and the larger global population?
A comment thread can’t get much weirder than this one. Of all the problems presented by the possible implosion of the world’s population, the one people want to talk about is that it might force us to shut down temples?
Let me suggest something different.
Whether we’re looking at excessive population growth or rapid population decline, population changes will give the world massive problems to deal with. (We’re already facing human-caused climate heating, which is a problem related to population growth.) These problems will transform our civilization, for better or worse.
We will have no choice but to make significant changes in our values. By “values” I mean the things that our culture prizes most. We cannot continue to exalt above all else the constant pursuit of greater material wealth. The material conditions of the Earth and the realities of population trends simply will not allow us to continue this pursuit.
I’m not suggesting that we are going to lose every material comfort, nor that we will give up the concept of progress. I’m suggesting that we will be forced to modify our priorities. However, in our culture right now, there is an abundance of stories about apocalyptic ruin. It seems that our storytellers have no trouble imagining our failure to cope with these problems.
What we need most are people who can imagine success. There are, in fact, a lot of people working on technological solutions to global climate heating. We are making progress on that. We lack people who are able to talk about the spiritual, social, and political values that can guide our way forward. Religion is not the only source of wisdom about this problem, but religion must be a crucial source of wisdom.
People ought to be thinking about the spiritual ideas that will help us as our civilization’s values change. Latter-day Saints ought to be incubating a culture that can serve as a light to the world. This is an opportunity for spiritual thriving, an opportunity to increase the presence of God’s light and love. Building temples is fine, but if that’s what we’re primarily focused on (and right now it is!), then we are very, very far from where we need to be in order to give the world what it needs from us now.
I would suggest that the first step should be a critical evaluation of how Latter-day Saint culture has thoroughly imbibed the idea that growth is the measure of our success. We want to grow every measurable number, whether it’s the number of members, the number of buildings, the number of acres, or the number of dollars. We are currently in a state of paralysis and retrenchment as we are confronted with a shrinking church membership. How can we shift our priorities so that the health of our communities matters most? How can we ensure that our communities thrive no matter whether the numbers go up or down?
Temples and the covenants and sacred space are the focus to have our communities thrive. There is a vision, even if it’s not the same vision that some want. Paralysis and retrenchment is not a take I agree with.
Hoosier’s list, where he says the church does well:
1. Pro-natal ethos (most commonly due to religion)
Church definitely does well here
2. High marriage rates
Church does well at promoting this; I would guess without data probably has good results
3. Single family homes and lower density
I don’t see the church doing or saying anything here, and don’t see that it is an issue the church can influence much. What am I
missing?
4. Young adults getting out of the house promptly
Again, I don’t see the church saying or doing anything here
5. Higher male earnings
How is this related to the church?
6. An ethos of male participation in the household
This is questionable for the church because all we really want to talk about is mothers.
7. Solid education for the young
I’m not sure what you see the church doing here. The biggest challenge in Utah is the cultural devaluing of public schools and
education.
8. Extended family support ethos
Definitely a church strength
9. Intentionally relaxed parenting standards
So far from church practice that it’s arguably a negative influence because parents are held responsible for everything.
10. Family-weighted work-life balance
Maybe family weighted for work-life; not family weighted for work-church-life balance.
11. Limitation of elective C-sections
Does the church say or do anything here?
I guess I’m mostly just wondering why you think the church is doing well on your list of requirements? It doesn’t address a large portion of these issues, is great on some, is poor on others. Again, what am I missing?
As far as the different policy triggers and cultural shifts to try to shift the fertility. Yes, all of the above, but I’m skeptical that they’ll change much. For example, the fertility rate in postwar Germany when everybody was living in rubble was higher than it is today with their generous family leave policies. The real story in the fertility collapse is cultural and, yes, religious, and I suspect we’re just going to keep collapsing until all of the Bill Mahers of this world have selected themselves out of the gene pool and highly fertile (typically highly religious) groups inherit the earth. (I actually published a paper that did some speculative evolutionary math about the spread of “having children” genes: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19485565.2016.1212322).
As far as temples go, I’ve heard of temples that were in locations that were probably wrongheaded and made little sense (I’ve heard multiple people make the same point as Stephen Fleming about the Yorba Linda temple), but I’ve also heard a lot of stories like RLD’s where the temple building spree had significantly reduced the burden of temple attendance, but on yet the other hand I’m also worried that temple building is used as a fig leaf to cover declining growth rates and is acting as an easy legacy item, but on the other hand God gave the Church this money, so I see no reason to not use it to help assure that every member is within a reasonable distance from a temple.
Sterling: The OP in that other post is consistent with what I’ve written here. While the Church will decline a lot of countries, it will grow in the aggregate as the center of gravity shifts to growing countries. As I noted, the Church’s fundamentals are strong, and this drives the point home. Missionaries are simply not very “successful” in terms of baptisms in places like South Korea that are in decline, and are more successful in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is going to be the engine of global growth over the next century. (And they were more successful in places like Latin America back when those places had fertility rates comfortably above replacement-level).
The reason birth-rates are cratering is because wages are stagnant and cost of living is high. That’s it, that’s the reason. This isn’t complicated. It’s expensive to have kids, and therefore an increasing number of people are, quite rationally, not having kids. If you want to incentivize people to have more kids, then you need to either raise wages to keep up with inflation (here’s your reminder that the U.S. Federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009), or lower the cost of living across the board (e.g. capping prescription drug and medical costs, slashing college tuition or even making it free, introducing wide-spread rent controls and mortgage ceilings like Truman did at the end of WWII, and etc.). Preferably both would happen at the same time.
Of course, the whole reason why wages are stagnant and the cost of living is high in the first place, is because the rich and powerful are able to profit off those self-same stagnant wages and high costs of living. But now they are facing a chronic labor shortage of their own making, and suddenly the rich and powerful are all crying about fertility rates. It is not lost on me that it is wealthy business owners like Elon Musk who cry the loudest about birthrates. Now, these same rich men could easily collude together to raise wages and cease price-gouging in order to encourage more future workers to get born, but of course those are the two things they absolutely refuse to do, and what they employ all their lobbyists in preventing from happening. If you’re going to wring your hands about low birth rates but remain silent on repressed wages and high costs of living, then all you are really saying is that you believe it is only the poor who need to make sacrifices to have more children, not the rich and powerful. And the poor already make enough sacrifices just to survive.
I’m a Millennial, and I’ll be honest: the idea of a bunch of half-empty towns sounds wonderful to me, because it means I will finally be able to afford a house. Don’t warn me about some looming stagnant economies when wages are already stagnant. You may say that is selfish and short-sighted of me; but it is nowhere near the selfishness and short-sightedness of those who demand we have more children while refusing to do anything to help us afford them.
“The reason birth-rates are cratering is because wages are stagnant and cost of living is high.” Not sure why this is your thesis when there is generally an inverse relationship between wages and fertility rates.
PWS: Re #4: Missions, and running a handful of very affordable (and in some cases, open admission) universities, are a big contribution to getting young adults out of the house.
Re #6: We really don’t only talk about mothers. There have been plenty of talks about fathers being involved in their children’s lives going back many decades at least, plus church creates a number of structures for involving fathers in their children’s lives.
Re #7: All the Primary/Seminary scripture memorization and reading is one of those things that looks inconsequential up close, but has big implications when it comes to education in the long term, like the Protestant educational advantage that came from its emphasis on reading.
Re #10: It’s still family-weighted vs. work.
J: The problem with “it’s expensive” as an explanation is that if you look around, you’ll see plenty of poor people with children. The problem is really that a particular standard of living is expensive, and it’s hard to give that up. Having children might mean living in an unfashionable place or compromising on your employment or making do without one car per driver or limiting activities to what’s affordable. But there are certainly some structural changes that could help – those proverbial walkable European towns where you don’t have to own a car can be a fantastic place to have children, no low-density housing required (we lived just fine for 2 years without a car in a 3 bedroom apartment with 4 children, and a few weeks with 5 before we moved).
There are several observations which rule out a purely economic causal inference for the demographic crisis.
When you graph fertility-per-woman based on income level, it comes out looking like a U. Poor people have lots of kids and rich people have lots of kids. The middle is where the collapse is. Notably, governmental efforts from Scandinavia to Hungary to South Korea and Japan have all failed to turn around their slide towards demographic oblivion. No amount of free medical costs, free school, capped rent or tax incentives have managed to turn things around. Only one industrialized country in the world has above replacement fertility – Israel, largely driven by the Orthodox Jewish population.
Furthermore, I’m only aware of one case where a nation has actually turned its birthrate around (Israel’s was always high and is declining, but more slowly than the rest of the world). That nation is Georgia. Georgia had abysmal birth-rates typical of post-Soviet states, but the Orthodox Church in Georgia rebounded with considerable strength after the fall of the USSR. In 2007, in an attempt to remedy this, the influential and widely respected Patriarch Ilia II offered to personally baptize any third and above child born to each family. Analysis by the Institute for Family Studies has demonstrated that this was the most significant contributing cause for a large and enduring spike in childbirths. Georgia is at replacement fertility; they will not decline. It’s more about culture than money.
J, to be frank, I couldn’t disagree in stronger terms. The idea that a few billionaires could collude and set the wage standards and rent standards of an entire economy can only be held seriously by somebody who knows little about American law regarding corporate governance (Google “fiduciary duties” and “Dodge v. Ford Motor Company”). That opinion belongs to the Gilded Age, not a modern regulatory environment. Population collapse might free up a cheap home, but it also exposes the entire economy to a tragedy of the commons as systems, once optimized for economies of scale, are no longer able to achieve them due to a shrinking and graying workforce and consumer base. Population collapse will not raise your standard of living.
– A Zoomer
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the church change its organizational design–over time–to one that places the temple at the center of a district of stakes to which it pertains. I think it’s quite possible that in the not too distant the church, which I consider to be in the process of bring forth Zion, will begin to look more like Zion with not just temples but temple districts dotting the earth–each fashioned after the Tent of Meeting tied down by its various stakes.
not too distant *future*…
Elder Christofferson six days ago:
“Still, it is possible that devotion to career can become the paramount focus of one’s life. Then all else becomes secondary, including any claim the Savior may make on one’s time and talent. For men, and for women as well, forgoing legitimate opportunities for marriage, failing to cleave to and lift one’s spouse, failing to nurture one’s children, or even intentionally avoiding the blessing and responsibility of child-rearing solely for the sake of career advancement can convert laudable achievement into a form of rebellion.”
Driving any change will have to occur with individual human beings, and individual human beings can be very complex. I do not place any blame on any individual church member for lowering birth rates — to me, it is simply a reality, fact of life.
I heard Elder Christofferson’s address on Saturday, but I think it will have zero impact. To have an impact on individuals, Elder Christofferson will have to be much more direct.
Maybe he needs to declare that no man may be advanced to an office requiring ordination to high priest unless he has fathered at least four children within marriage?
Maybe he needs to declare that full-time missionaries will go out as priests (this fits well with scripture), with marriage within the church as a prerequisite for Melchizedek Priesthood ordination?
Maybe he needs to declare that a two-percent tithing credit per living child, up to four children, so that a couple with four children might pay only 2% of income as tithing?
In other words, something real?
Again, I do not blame any individual church member for the world’s lowering birth rates.
For those who like statistics and numbers and displaying data, I wonder if we can see the number of children had by current First Presidency and Twelve office holders? Other general authorities? Stake presidents? Stake presidents in the U.S. versus stake presidents in Europe, Japan, and other societies? I don’t know, but I tend to think they are following the same trends as the larger society, and I am okay with that.
It is normal to want to live at a common standard within one’s society — it is not automatically sin or selfishness. No good, and no solution, will come by saying others are selfish for having fewer children than their great-grand-parents. The reality is too complex for blame, unless the blame comes from God himself in very clear terms.
Looking at the number of children from the Q15 will tell you about birthrates in the 50s through the 90s. The birthrate among the general authorities is zero – primarily because they are all men. But even among their wives, I suspect that very few have given birth in the last decade. Even stake presidents and bishops are rarely still having kids, though many of them do have younger kids.
No doubt there are bigger issues for population decline than shuttered temples, but this post is about the church and I do think that temples going out of use will have some important effects on the church. I’m guessing there may be ever increasing demands from leaders for the members to use the temples more that may create some frustration among a lot of members. Many members may have questions of if the massive temple building was a good idea or good use of funds. There may be questions of President Nelson’s foresight and questions about our leaders and revelation.
So I see more of all of those discussions 10 years from now that will likely only increase.
DaveW, Yes. But if having a large number of children is a sign of faithfulness, obedience, and duty, then it is a fair question.
I do not hold that having a large number of children is a sign of faithfulness, obedience, and duty for Latter-day Saints, but some might — and I hope they will not weaponize Elder Christofferson’s words on Saturday against other church members.
Disagreeing with the majority but agreeing with the minority, I will point out that these demographic crisis are primarily situational and not inevitable.
You use South Korea as an example. Is their demographic crisis because of urbanization and lack of traditional family values? Or is it because over 75% of South Koreans ages 18 to 34 call their country “Hell” and want to leave (https://asiatimes.com/2019/12/75-of-young-want-to-escape-south-korean-hell/)? Developed nations with a high happiness index like Finland have birth rates well above replacement. Not being able to provide a good life for their children is the number one reason people aren’t having as many children. Everything else is sophistry used to further political means.
In response to RL’s comment at 5:34 pm:
I started attending the temple a long time ago. I cherish the peace and enlightenment it has brought me. But attending the temple is not now and never has been a way of building community. The temple can be an effective supplement to community-building work, not a replacement for it.
The increasing emphasis on the temple is coming at the expense of resources (most significantly the resources of time and attention) devoted to the health of wards and branches. This is one of the ways we are turning inward—away from constructive engagement with society—and it is one sign of the church’s current retrenchment.
Developed nations with a high happiness index like Finland have birth rates well above replacement.
Finland has not been above replacement since the 1960s.
These numbers are not hard to find, people. Let’s do a little research before posting.
JI, it’s not true that one line in one talk has zero effect. Long-term, repeated, consistent teaching has major effects over time.
Loursat, attending the temple certainly can be a way of community building. A ward, youth, or organizational temple trip gets a bunch of people to organize for a common purpose and spend time together. For us, that means 5 hours sitting next to people in a car, for example. Or 8 hours if the trip is to the second-closest temple, which is still necessary sometimes. It’s definitely not a detriment to ward health.
Temple trips have been a wonderful way of building community in my ward’s Relief Society. We have them monthly and have a consistent group that participants. It’s not unusual to have as many as 10 sisters attend. They carpool, take sack lunches to eat together in the cafeteria, go to the LDS bookstore, and generally make a day of it. In fact I think that it’s one of the best friendshipping activities our RS has done.
Temple trips are especially good for building community among youth because it puts them all on equal footing. The jocks, the geeks, the theater kids…they’re all the same in the temple. (And on the long drive together, eating a meal together, etc.) The drive is also a good chance for them to just talk with adults, especially if the spiritual mood of the temple lasts a bit on the way home.
Jonathan,
You addressed me, saying “JI, it’s not true that one line in one talk has zero effect.”
I never said anything of that sort. Did you intend to address someone else?
Ji made a good point. Innovative policy to back up the one-liners.
JI, this was your line line: “I heard Elder Christofferson’s address on Saturday, but I think it will have zero impact.”
And this was my reply, expressing disagreement: “Long-term, repeated, consistent teaching has major effects over time.” What Elder Christofferson said is just one part of what the Church teaches in a broad way. And that has an impact.
After the Second Coming, which Pres. Nelson seems. to think is within the life span of many of us, it very possible some 1 billion people will be joining the church.
Hence the need for many temples including large ones.
Oh, yeah, thanks. I do think Elder Christofferson’s talk will have zero impact on LDS fertility statistics. To have an impact on individuals in our society (and a consequent impact on statistics), Elder Christofferson will have to be much more direct — he will have to give real direction and relevant counsel to specific people or classes of people instead of generalized unactionable platitudes. We have to live in society.
I do fear one impact, though, and that is some church members weaponizing those words against other church members. We seem to do this too much. Or, that has been my observation.
I agree Elder Christofferson’s talk is not likely to have any significant effect. Maybe for a very few. I’m not really sure it has much actual relevance to the complex reasons for falling fertility.
It’s good that people find social value in temple trips or going to a local temple in groups. However, those activities are incidental to the purpose of the temple, and they are dispensable. If the purpose of the temple depended on a temple’s remoteness, then it would be counterproductive to keep building more temples closer to more people. My point is that temple activity, even when we can attach something socially worthwhile to it, is not a substitute for the work of nurturing social connections in our wards and branches.
I fear that the work of nurturing social connections in our wards and branches has almost come to an end — we have no robust youth programs, no meaningful ward activities, no invigorating or consequential content in Sunday meetings — I understand that pendulums swing, and I think this pendulum has swung too far in this direction. I fear we may be over-focusing on temples at the expense of our wards.
ji, I think you’re overstating things, but I do have some similar concerns that we’re heading in the direction you’re worried about. Again, I’m in an area where membership shrinking and the church’s policy of allowing wards to be increasingly smaller does make wards does add to a feeling of loss of vitality. Temple attendance can be a powerful experience, but I do worry that our leaders have turned temple attendance into too much of a hoped for panacea: hoping it will fix all/most problems. Such hopes, I think, are overshooting the temple’s good effects. I do think we ought not to put so many eggs in the basket of temple attendance.
A sanctified people will do the right things in their wards and communities. And increased focus on the temple and the work involved is the very thing that will lead the saints–collectively–towards sanctification.
Utah is 1.84 births per woman currently. So… tell me how the church is going to do better than the gen population? Of course only 42% of Utahns currently self identify as LDS, although I’m sure the churches cooked statistics are higher. Still i think most people have noticed even LDS families are smaller and can no longer compensate for the inevitable attrition of children who go inactive as soon as they leave home which is about 40%
Jack, I think you’re telling me that my concerns have no validity? I hope you’re right, but I’m not persuaded yet.
ji,
I agree that fostering a sense of community at the ward level is important. But I don’t see that effort and increased focus on temple worship as competing virtues. In fact, I believe that more worship in the temple will help solidify the community of the saints rather than hinder it.
I too think the temple building is a look of “success” for the church as the rest of the “stats” we worshipped in the past are not doing well. For those who think we need these for when Jesus comes for “new members” you are assuming Jesus will do temple ordinances/rituals the exact same way we do now. I assume, He will not. We dont know. I am pretty sure His work will get done whether we have 200 or 2000 temples when He arrives. “More temples” for only holy reasons is hard for me to believe based on our temple building past.
One conference the leaders stress temples as a work for the dead. Now they seem to stress temples for “us” and are not mentioning the work for the dead. Members chase the latest “thing” at these conferences. Like we as a culture tend to do, we focus on the wrong things, IMO. (I include myself here)
In my area, if you are an older member that wants to be a temple worker, a YSA applicant will bump you out of a vacant position every time. Temple ordinances have been changed dramatically over the last 10+ years. These changes, IMO, are to keep younger members in the church and interested in temple ordinances. They are more focused on the temple endowment “experience” (less creepy) instead of the old traditional ways people my age lived through. (very odd at best)
Lots of members will take the changes and call it “revelation” or proof that Jesus must be coming soon because the ordinance is changing (again) and that is all fine and may well be true. I am convinced it is all about making membership a “better” experience and helping to stop the bleed of people (younger gen) leaving the church. This is not a bad thing IMO.
I could be completely wrong of course.
For me the endowment is simply a ritual that teaches/reminds me that I need to literally become a new person symbolically through being cleansed and putting on new clothes and a new name, while making agreements with God to be with Him again. If successful, eventually living with Him and enjoying all what that entails.
The ordinance is not the focus, it is how am I doing with becoming that new person when I leave the building. Very beautiful simple concept for me.
Now, if you take the focus of building temples to help mankind be like God instead of getting an “ordinance done” then build all the temples you can if mankind will make the change and try to be God-like on earth!
Personally, I believe that the leadership of “the Church” and many of the financial/operational bureaucrats contained therein – do have a % of pretty bright people. The can see the population/membership trends as well as we can. With this in mind, I think the major increase in new temples are primarily based on two things: 1. a corporation which has over $150 billion in financial reserves, simply must have financial/tax “write offs”. The temples are a significant way to publicly display the Church’s financial commitment to community involvement and “spiritual service”, and 2. it’s a Russell M. Nelson attempt at a Legacy – far beyond any previous prophet.
It’s been clear to me that he’s been competing with Gordan B. Hinckley for decades; on this matter he’s got his formal protagonist “buried”.
In 1 Nephi 14 we read:
11 And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the whore of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.
12 And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw.
13 And it came to pass that I beheld that the great mother of abominations did gather together multitudes upon the face of all the earth, among all the nations of the Gentiles, to fight against the Lamb of God.
14 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.
Nephi’s prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled in very deed. The church today looks exactly the way he described it–and the “power and great glory” that will descend upon the saints will come by virtue of the endowment of power that they receive in the holy temple. Thus the church’s goal to place the temple at the center of the saints’ “small dominions.”
In this discussion, I believe we’ve missed a key reason for temples: to do work for those who have passed on the other side. It is true that the living are blessed for doing the work (including our youth), but I think the pressure from the other side to be “gathered” through earthly ordinances is tremendous and is felt by the prophets—hence, a significant reason for having so many temples and encouraging regular attendance. Millions are waiting for their work to be done.
“It’s been clear to me that he’s been competing with Gordan B. Hinckley for decades; on this matter he’s got his formal protagonist “buried”.
Agreed. They didn’t get along that well apparently. Nelson is for sure working on a legacy.
Last Lemming — I’m afraid I misspoke. What I meant to say was that Finland has a high birth rate compared to many other examples given, not that it’s necessarily above replacement. My point still stands, but that was an unfortunate error.
I count it a blessing that a temple is being built a 10 minute drive away instead of 100 minute drive. Even if it is only open limited hours it will be nice to have.
However I am haunted by the words of Moroni when I consider how much effort and money and emphasis is placed on on temple service compared to the seemingly lesser effort and money and emphasis serving our brothers and sisters that are “the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.”
From Mormon 8:
35 Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing.
36 And I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts, unto the wearing of very fine apparel, unto envying, and strifes, and malice, and persecutions, and all manner of iniquities; and your churches, yea, even every one, have become polluted because of the pride of your hearts.
37 For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.
38 O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church of God? Why are ye ashamed to take upon you the name of Christ? Why do ye not think that greater is the value of an endless happiness than that misery which never dies—because of the praise of the world?
39 Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, and notice them not?
Not meant as a condemnation, but I do think Jon brings up a point of cost/benefit. Yes, it can be nice to have temples closer, and yes the church has the money, but I think all the temple building may spark the question in some members’ minds: is this the best way to spend the money?
I think those questions will only grow in the coming years as more temples get built, especially if the membership begins to shrink. Some members will ask if the temple building was a wise choice. More and more members will wonder about other ideas for how to spend the money (or how is SHOULD have been spent).
Yes Stephen Fleming, that is exactly my point. And not just money but also time and energy of the church organization and church members.
Maybe my experience is different than others, but ask yourself: are there more youth temple trips or youth service activities of real impact on the community? At church do you hear more about familysearch.org or justserve.org? Do your fellow ward members collectively spend more time serving in the temple or serving in the community? Not that each of the former things is bad, but I do wonder about the balance.
Leaving the decision to our holy prophets on where and how to spend the Lords money by revelation is the best answer. Our church is guided by the spirit, not the mere assumptions of men. If the prophets want us to go to the temple more, we better be getting to the temple more.
I’m guessing an increasing number of members are going to question if our leaders are always making the right decisions. I think such questioning will increase if we have a number of little used temples in the next 10 years.
Stephen,
The trend is going the opposite direction I believe. The amount of temples is a reflection of temple attendance not necessarily membership numbers. As more current members frequent the temple more often you need more temples. Theoretically speaking, you could have a stagnant or even shrinking church membership in an area but have such an increase in temple visitation frequency that they would overcrowd and more temples would be built.
In my area of southeast Idaho we haven’t really seen that much membership increase but yet 6 new temples have been built in my area since I was a kid and sessions at the temple are almost always at full capacity. I attribute that to the increase of frequency attendance. I am sure the Lord wants us to increase that frequency 10 fold. That would require a ten fold of new temples, or, a further streamlining of the endowment and other ordinances, or both streamlining and new temples. I’m guessing the latter.